No pic-a-nic for returning '60s icon

'Yogi Bear' — 1 star

December 16, 2010|By Michael Phillips | Movie critic

"Yogi Bear" gives cheap hackwork a bad name. Which is a shame, because hackwork made this industry.

Fledgling director and special effects veteran Eric Brevig managed 92 diverting minutes of schlock with the 3-D "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (2008), which offered some hope (against hope) for "Yogi Bear." You may know that "Yogi Bear" is derived from the animated Hanna-Barbera TV original. Yogi himself was introduced as a supporting character on "The Huckleberry Hound Show" in the late 1950s; the character's yen for the pic-a-nic baskets, not to mention the vocal inflections, amounted to an appealing knockoff of Art Carney's Ed Norton on "The Honeymooners."

You may also know that just about anyone can "do" Yogi's voice. The new movie didn't really need Dan Aykroyd to do it. Nor did it need Justin Timberlake to "do" Boo Boo, Yogi's fellow resident of Jellystone Park. What it needed was a joke or two, and perhaps one less snot- or spit-related attempt at a joke.

This is a live-action movie with a couple of animated bears (plus a cartoon turtle) forced to live within its drab confines. Tom Cavanagh underplays with an air of "Oh, well. I'm making more than YOU make" as Ranger Smith, whose park is being turned into a logging-rights nightmare of devastation by the local mayor (Andrew Daly, given far too much screen time; the movie isn't called "Mayor Brown," it's called "Yogi Bear"). I did enjoy some of the weirdo line readings brought to the role of the visiting documentary filmmaker played by Anna Faris. But the story about Yogi's fall from grace, and Ranger Smith's self-loathing issues (not since Dean Jones in the original "Love Bug" has there been more of a sad-sack kids'-movie protagonist), and the fight to save the park from rank commercialism comes to criminally little. Besides, is this really the picture to decry rank commercialism?

Intriguing 3-D side note: I can't recall seeing a recent 3-D movie wherein you're watching an action sequence, in this case a whitewater rafting sequence, and suddenly you think: Wait, isn't that '60s style rear-projection behind the actors' heads? Why am I watching that in 3-D? It's like looking at a GAF Viewmaster. And if you remember those, this movie isn't for you. Preteens may not hate "Yogi Bear." It's barely 70 minutes long without the end credits. But if Aykroyd contributed any of his own wisecracks to the voice work I'd be surprised, followed by stunned, followed by bargaining, acceptance and not laughing.

Credits: Directed by Eric Brevig; written by Jeffrey Ventimilia, Joshua Sternin and Brad Copeland, based on characters created by Hanna-Barbera Productions; produced by Donald De Line and Karen Rosenfelt. A Warner Bros. Pictures release. Running time: 1:22.